Kocher, Ruth Ellen: Ending in Planes

Noemi Press, 2014 Ending in Planes offers the reader an infinite sentence only capable in dreams. Imagine a speaker who needs not breath for the body of their words nor time to create them. In long lines devoid of punctuation, Ruth Ellen Kocher uses capital letters to denote the start of a “sentence.” Poems of this form, scattered throughout this collection, offer the reader the unending. Its syntax is dynamic and self-renewing. The effect reads like a long stumble through slumber. —Kym Littlefield * * * “The Benefits of Any Kind of Silver Light” (from Ending in Planes) The facts aren’t obvious Into one hill and the next and then Cars everywhere Somewhere to go To whatever waits there And then All goes Sun goes Up there goes Behind you goes Which is why light filled with your eyes comes into the roomIn dark the light comes because the binary Always strikes To cancel out Dark with light But more often Light with dark What do you tell people who leave somewhere Things fallen out of what